Socialism in Venezuela has made illiteracy a thing of the past

Let's not.The truth is most people have claimed over the years from the liberal side that welfare is not synonymous with socialism, and conservatives derided it as socialist, but regardless, it's not State ownership of the industry which I is what I was taught socialism is.So here in the US, it is capitalism that actually provides health care for poor people, and the government subsidizes the consumer that cannot pay for it.The claim that there is not health care for the middle class is false. Not having insurance is not the same as not having health care.

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As far as Scandanavia, they defense was paid for by the US for 50 years, and they are smaller nations with different immigration issues, or used to be different, and are not analogous.

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Im from Sweden, which lies in Scandanavia.
US hasn't paid a dime for our defence. ever.
Your cold war arms-race sure made us invest loads of money in our military and defence industry though.

You think Stalin would have left you alone without the US deterrant?

You think the US would have left them alone without the Soviet deterrant?

Yes, obviously. Look at how we treated Japan and Germany, our enemies, and how we treated England and Canada. The US has no territorial designs over Sweden, and to imply we do is quite silly, but I guess that's why there is a winky.This message has been edited by randman, 11-09-2005 07:56 PM

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sw.htmlCould there be a connection????You might want to check the CIA world factbook page on Venezuela. The oil production is a bit higher, and for some reason the USA gives a shit about them.This message has been edited by mick, 11-09-2005 08:01 PM

Mick, ever been to Finland back during the Cold War. They had a different sense of appreciation than the Swede who posted here, and they did because they knew full well without the US, Stalin and the Russians would have annexed them and most likely over-run all of Europe.It was not a joke.

I'm not joking.I've never been to Finland. But suggesting that the US role during the cold war was in any way honourable is laughable. During the cold war the US (and its allies, Australia, the UK, and others) "protected" a variety of countries including Vietnam, El Salvador, Guatemala, Columbia, Chile, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iran, Nicaragua, the list goes on and on. In many cases the US was protecting these people from their own democractically elected governments.I'm confident that the attrocities of the USSR were matched in turn by the attrocities of the USA in most cases. Both governments had scant regard for humanity and should be equally abhorred.What's strange is that American military intervention overseas appears to have continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Very mysterious, that.

It's mysterious because you don't really grasp history. Sadly, we have messed around Latin America since a long ways back, and the Cold War was no exception. I think Reagan and a lot of others made a mistake of viewing Latin America in an east/west paradigm when that wasn't the case. So the US has not done well there, and there is a reason why.The check on bad behaviour by the US government is the electorate, and the American people in general just don't care enough about Latin America to educate themselves about it, and so more sinister forces are able to manipulate American policy at times, though not all the time.As far as Vietnam, France got us in there, and the dumb politicians would not allow us to conquer North Vietnam and end the war. But at the same time, we were trying to do good and protect south Vietnam from communism which is a great evil.As far as the Soviets, it is sad you believe they were no worse than anyone else, and that somehow the United States was just as bad. I suppose had a US president killed somewhere between 60-110 million of it's own citizens, you'd have a point.The Cold War was very honorable in respect to Europe. Without the US, all of Europe would have resembled the worst of Eastern Germany, which still has not recovered from communism devastation of that soceity.

Since you seem unable to handle two statements at once, let's see if you can address just one of them."That there is any health care for the very, very poor is thanks to Socialism."

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Nope. I don't believe socialist doctors are providing the health care, do you?Welfare is not the same as socialism, but if you are counting welfare as socialist, that's fine, and I would then say under that definition of socialism, socialism helps provide free health care.Of course, prior to that, most doctors just provided about 20% of their services free, or sometimes poor folks would give them items from the farm or whatever. At least, that's how it was in my grandfather's day (both were doctors but speaking of one that practiced in rural NC).He was a democrat but hardly a socialist, and socialism had nothing to do with why or how he provided free health care to people that couldn't afford it.

Hi randman, I said it was mysterious that US foreign intervention should have persisted after the collapse of the Soviet Union (and indeed intensified, one might argue, at least in its geographical scope). Of course I was being ironic; it is only mysterious if you think that US foreign policy was motivated by a desire to prevent the "great evil" of Soviet communism. Personally, I don't think it is at all mysterious why the US has persistently intervened in Latin America, overthrowing democratically elected governments etc. So you haven't actually addressed my question.In fact it is you who clings to this ridiculous idea that Reagan (for example) was "sadly" motivated by an "east/west paradigm" (whatever that is meant to be). The real motivations of Reagan's administration were far more mundane. There was no "sadness" expressed for his victims at the recent state funeral of Reagan, was there? It looked like bog-standard hero-worship to me, by people who genuinely don't grasp history. No, I'm sorry, but you were not trying to "do good". You already said yourself that the US government is "sadly" motivated by a false "east/west paradigm", not by "goodness". I don't want to get into a death-toll competition here (especially as I have absolutely no desire to defend the record of the USSR) but those figures are inflated.The fact that you are seriously defending US foreign policy on the basis that "we haven't killed as many people as the Soviet Union did" speaks for itself, I think.Mick

Great, we will let your posts stand and have a great day. Just to make sure it doesn't get edited, here it is folk in it's entirety.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Mick, are you the liberal version of the far right crowd that deny the Holocaust took place claiming the numbers are "inflated"?Those numbers are not inflated. Learn some history, and you have a real problem recognizing that the United States has done a lot of good with good motives. That doesn't excuse the bad things done, but in your simplicity, you fail to realize that after WWII instead of becoming an Empire, the US backed off, and only reasserted itself when it was obvious without US leadership, tyranny in the form of communism would sweep Europe and enslave most of the world.It was the US that kept France, Germany and all of Western Europe from being steamrolled by Stalin's tanks and nothing else, at least not anything of this world.

You got a problem with the post, jar?It's sad but you evidently know so little about the history of health care. Both efforts towards more government and steps towards socialized medicine and the insurance industry are making medicine more of a business than a profession.Talk to some retired doctors that have seen the changes. Prior to the government picking up the tab, doctors felt obligated to treat patients that couldn't afford treatment, and something around 20% of their work went unpaid, at least that's how it was in North Carolina. It was a profession, and still is to a degree but the business side is eroding that.Of course, sometimes patients that couldn't pay would find a way to do something. I can't tell you how many times I saw people bring something by my grandfather's house or our house, and ask why they did that, and it was because they were a patient at one time my Dad or grandfather took care of. It didn't really dawn on me they did thatm especially around Christmas, because they couldn't pay when they needed treatment and were treated nonetheless.One former patient brought my Dad for Christmas high quality moonshine, apple brandy, (lived in the eastern part of the state), and he never drank it and when we got to be teen-agers, since it was clear, we would take some out and put water back.Anyway jar, you claim people wouldn't be treated without socialism. That's just not true, and it wasn't true then.Maybe government programs are good to get help to the poor, but at the same time, the more you take the reigns of medicine from doctors and put it with either the government or HMOs and the lawyers, the less of a profession it becomes and the more the doctor is an employee of a business, or of the government if you have your way.Either way, you should know it will eventually have a very negative effect in medicine.